30x30 2012 #22

A Cloud Descended

A cloud descended into my scrubbed yard.
It felt like the inside
of a well-worn poly duvet,
except frosty like the freezer. I took a pair
of sewing shears to it, I wanted
to make a hole. Was there any chance
the cloud might take off again?
The neighbors asked. I didn't care.
This cloud was so different
from the vaporclouds we rudely airplane through.
It was flecked with black atmospheric bits
like vanilla bean ice cream.
I told myself it was here
to stay & climbed inside.

yoga and normal and me

Tonight I went to a yoga class and I felt really weird there. Do you know how sometimes, you're in your body, and then it's suddenly very offputting to be there? The feeling remedied itself by the end of the class (which was lovely, I think, in its entirety), but I kept feeling unsettled since. Combine that with the awkward changing-seasons sinusitis and the caffeine-freedom I have self-imposed this week -- a horrible weird feeling indeed.

If you're one of the three people (hi!) who reads this blog, I bet you noticed I haven't been posting poems. I KNOW. I have a few, actually, that I've been working on offline, but haven't gone public with yet. Maybe I will post them. Or maybe I will make it 25 poems in 30 days. Nobody will be that mad, either way.

Here's a great cover that I've been thinking of all day. How do you undo the big part of a song, the part that makes the shade of the original shine through the cover version? By leaving it off. <3

30x30 2012 #21

Ghost Clerk

I have been standing in this store

for as long a time as you

think, millennia

I have always lived here

I am what you think of a bad little clerk

Every mannequin represents a bad thought I did

and they are all posed so public

So long-limbed

Everyone thinks I don't have a home and I don't

I am only here, that's the big reveal.

Have you ever had to learn to put

down what you most want wasping

round you? When you alone tie the sash

I am there. Yes in the liminal

corridors around the changing room

I press my finger ungenerously

to the seams.

30x30 2012 #20

Conveyor

How can I access the Conveyor

Every day I wonder this

The Conveyor brings elements

Grinding elements into a hot result

Somewhere inaccessible

lives the Conveyor

I try everyday

Click bones together

Lick their obscene weird bony outside edges

Like an unnamed narrator there is a Conveyor

But I can access no such

Conveyor, which must be the easy thing

of the universe, infinity's horribly

easy gait. I get a sunburn, I ride

a train and a train. I transfer

my blood out
Because that I can.

30x30 2012 #19

The Dinner Party

Since you came over

you should know

I made quinoa

It was healthful and all

I added salt, and butter

I feel like I negated it

I do this a lot, make something

good be weird and awful

Feeling like I should be ashamed

is something I do a lot too

But here we are, having a dinner

You drove and I am feeding you drinks

We can reconcile this can't we

We can make this an alright picture

We are in a colorful well-deodorized room

We are having a good time

30x30 2012 #18

This one made me kind of sad and I don't think it's done but posting anyway.


_______________________

The Duplicate

I received a duplicate

Everything was in fine working order, beautiful

& well-assembled, except

the duplicate knew it was a duplicate

Together we went about the errands

Day by day we bonded closer

Arranged the stamped silver in the back of the drawer

I would scrape the bowl and the duplicate

would lick the spoon

but I could tell the duplicate was sad

From the bed after boyfriend fell asleep

I would call out Are you awake to the duplicate

Yes would always come the reply

I could scratch your back I would offer

That's OK the duplicate would say

For many years it went on like this

A call and a response

I had just become accustomed to being in a pair

when one day the duplicate said: I am going
Then the duplicate took some of the clothes

and a vinyl Tweety Bird tote bag

and not much else

and I said Do you want some money

That's OK the duplicate said

Before the duplicate left

we clasped hands

Our hands fit together like zipper teeth

This was many years ago now

A zipper doesn't work without both sides

or at least it's not a zipper
It doesn't close anything

30x30 2012 #17

Daniel Hoevels

I read today about the man Daniel Hoevels

who drew a knife swift across

his neck, a true knife

his own true neck

and bled from his open neck

in front of those hundreds of people

He was an actor and he was accustomed to people

But nobody ever feels OK about knives

Pulling day by day

a false one across your delicious carotid

The knife became switched for sharper

An ill management

I wonder if I will ever feel this way

Responsible for a knife death

I assume is fake but isn't

I wonder if I will ever pretend to die for people

I wonder if I will ever be grievously injured

doing something that I love to do

Daniel Hoevels survives

continues to play and wears a bandage

I can barely wear a scarf without feeling oppressed

Day by slowly babbling day

I feel pains creep up from all the typing

Hands, my neck's trim bones

and a soggy burn behind my eyes

that makes me turn away

But you can hardly call this drama

You can hardly call it injury

I am doing something like getting hurt

Doing something like something I love

In the kegs of a theatre

a Daniel Hoevels, unafraid

plays out a fabulous death

The unrealized death

That says "I am

A levitation of love

I am just and I reclaim"

30x30 2012 #16

Bali Hai

The crackling sound just so cancerous for us to laugh

about. The fish on the box did not match

our outfits like Black would have

or Nat Shermans

but the taste was sweeter and I guess

we were sort of fishing

a little bit. I am finally back

in my own life

though it took ten years.

30x30 2012 #15

It Is OK to be Disappointing

An idle breakfast

and a lackluster lunch make your day

horribly sad. While I eat

I think of the next food.

We are grilled

and alone and cheesy.

If food is a diamond,

get down deep

in the diamond mine. You'll find

something hidden but most of you will die.

30x30 2012 #14

This is a poem about how weird I feel about ______________. What is the word? It's one word, and pretty powerful.

___________________________

Bourbon

You and me and your city three

sit on a Bed-Stuy stoop,

its country side,

& talk about what it means.

I am a soft white woman

who rides a lot of buses.

I weight train but still.

Everybody could get me. Criminals. Cops.

I walk around with a halo of nonchalance

about me like a math radius.

I am a paradigm of my own.

I think nothing can hurt me.

Mostly nothing wants to because who cares.

I live some places. I am not a victim.

The eyebrow glimmer, the side-eye

I would only be insisting upon,

performing. We sit here drinking,

and our glass

glasses mean we live here,

even when we don't. I feel

horrible. What do you do?

Nothing much, your light reflects green,

just hide your bourbon if the police roll by.

30x30 2012 #13

Love,

When I hear your voice

a hive rises smoothly to my lip

My top lip

as if a gorgeous birthmark

I am growing birthmarks to make myself

more beautified from the inside

when your voice touches me

It is a bubble of response

The bubble is big &

there is a heartbeat in it

like a foreign little body

Like I have a pregnant face

Before long this hive

is my favorite part of my face

Before long it is my whole face

& I am a hive of love activity and it's weird

Yes you make me feel

like unnatural

30x30 2012 #12

And yet again I'm behind, because of the amazing event last night I did not get to post -- I had the pleasure of reading in the company of Gina Abelkop, Rohin Guha, Carrie Murphy, and Jason Helm. All of them are angels and possibly demons and I feel very good about being associated with them.

So, here is an older draft I've been tinkering with, today! Still not done but I am posting it because I am not embarrassed.

____________________________

The Memorable Swim

Putting a physical event

between you and the disaster will create

a little wall and this wall will make it easier

Not easy but better

For example go for a memorable swim

For example Lucky me

I am kind of dumpy but still

after my memorable life-defining catastrophe I get

to be surrounded by slightly better

than average looking men

and choose between them

Oh Wow

Puts the calamity in real perspective when I

feel like there is a lens on me

Try to not feel selfconscious when I choose

the one with the back hair or the one with no back hair but who can't cook

There is an audience rooting for the one who can't cook

I guess the back hair one is less relatable

But forget it Pan back to me

See, in between me and my debilitating breakdown

is a huge publicity tool

Media blitz to take and own

And that's what I mean

Control and don't give it back

The camera comes to your night swim

You stride in majestically, slowly

the water climbing up and darkening your suit

A stunned silence in the beach world,

then feeling music plays and suddenly

nothing seems bad

A great landmark

A distance

radical radius

To examine the thing and find it charming

30x30 2012 #11

St. Grass

Green heart on your sleeve, we meet our sweetie

on the pitch of the quad A little rubbery

necking A little that

Swells a little under

the oily touch, understand

No body mows

at this hour

I have always been the recession

of the soil But you have always had a bit of grass

growing magic in your Verdana thumb

So this The long everstretch

softly crabgrassing each house and thing

the only place where I could come

and sod, and instant lawn

30x30 2012 #10

Holotype

A man drew me today

An artist plucked me from a crowd

and put me to the rendering paper

If you were an artist

with an eye of an artist

you'd notice several special things

about me: I am dusted in ochroid down

and I can grow it anytime

Wrench myself

a drippy gold

When I leave a bath the water clings

to my flesh, gold

I have to wrap up in a gritty towel to not be so shocking

Who would grab me underneath the chandelier

by my neck hairs and force me down

Nobody

That is for ordinaries

Not by looking at me

would you know that there are those whose constitutions glow

some kind of metal that you can beat

30x30 2012 #9

Vampire

I am a vampire in a grayly coughing dawn

I prepare a ritual of the hallucinogenic sleep

I lay down

My gnatted arms spread by my sides

I cannot

but let

an autobahn of blood be mealy in me

You know what I mean

We king our impulses, love

Eat and prey

Every day

In the cardboard arcade

I am a penny operator laughing copper

I dribble a bright novelty ball down the boardwalk

I can't make myself be alive

I do not feel sorry

I only talk about me

the laptop shudders violently when I type my About Me

Will I stay here in the ruin

of course I will

I say

I let it twine around my fingers

what I do is a conjunction

I smooth the gothic filament of my agreeing

and I close my eyes

And how an hourglass is wide on both ends

but wide enough in the center for one grain only

Is my voice in my throat

I use it to gorge

with my gentle introduction

"I can smell you

It's nice and I like it

Did you know that I am real"

30x30 2012 #8

Rosebriar at the Party

Sometimes for good story's sake

facts get mojito-muddled

As a good protagonist I go with it but I'd

never even touched that antique instrument

I cut my finger opening cheap sparkling wine

I made the glass

last and not shatter

on the tile when I supposedly went dormant

and got covered in centipedes and dust

This never happens in the retelling:

The air is stuffed

with skin particles we slough off

and my lover is drowsy

He can't hold his liquor

I have never been to sleep at all

I was on a beer run when they told it

Found everyone passed out and this

is what they came up with to cover.

30x30 2012 #7

With apologies to the Archaic Torso Of Apollo.

_______________________

Recycle More, Wasteless

Poems are exhausting

I'd rather recycle.

Beverage cartons

bottles metal & foil

and I feel good about my efforts

an At Least

I Tried sort of consolation prize

It's kind of hippie

On the paper from the NYC government

there's this "Everything else" category

for like tennis rackets and other failed hobbies

Even though that stuff is non-recyclable

it feels right to send it away

Like to a "farm for things you don't care about"

you still feel like it fits in somewhere

there go "Clothing" and "Mirrors"

right next to "Plastic rings"

There go the way you look and the way

you look at yourself

the next waste

But remember to cut the plastic rings

so they don't hurt any birds

Don't know what you do with the mirrors

maybe don't put them down there after all

Ah I am sure there is a great reward

for people who recycle

Headache-free in eternity

I am full of eternity

help me sort these

I've got two categories

Batteries

and non-glass lidded drinking containers

with straws

mostly juice cups

I am sure about eternity and that's why I juice

these are containers for juice I drank

I pour them out and into these cleanse bottles

I may look like I don't care but I care a lot

I have a terrible fear for death and I

need to purge at least once a month

Recycling helps

The smug cartoon trashcans with lidded eyes

smiling with a single perforation-free eggtooth

telling me about soft paper

I am going to be in this picture one day

Myself 2D and instructive

I am saying "Please sort, I love you"

Hunching over the green and blue bins

I am saying "You must change your life"

30x30 2012 #6

Mrs. F talks Catkins

Drove the cats away from Broadway Junction,

sent their soft backs galloping on my way home. I am not

a cat lover

nor a cat gatherer

I don't have the home or nerve

or the Draculanian perversity to keep cats

live Cats

I am however fond of pussy willow.

Don't coat w/talking

your relationship

to silver like a pan scrubbed good

That I am very happy with. Could see my house

full of them if I was sure they wouldn't continue to grow.

30x30 2012 #5

Florida

Imported shoreline is washed away each year

Feet in the truckferried grains,

stump of an ankle when you walk.

How far to dig in the backyard mash

before we hit the packed sand.

Can we bury this animal

deep so other animals won't come.

Soon another storm will come.

Just wrap them around yourself, you can't

put your arms around the romance of a storm.

Fake romance w/you and the storm.

Trace the outline of the sea,

your spine growing crooked

your eyes rolling up.

Only 15% of a wave is the visible part.

I swim here but not long

thinks everybody.

The cataclysmic iron-scented air

Remember the cigarettes stolen during storms in more vivid detail

than the ones in good weather

unjust personal memory

wriggling on the end of the hook

You know the hook.

You miss so much of your own life

Bank account drawn

Face drawn crying

& the face behind it too shaky to render

More than X years of my life I have had this artistic pressure

to do super well and it all started there

in the lifted offices of Florida

Show your ass

Learn the Arabic of line & meter

get good evaluations

Get a good book idea

there is an alligator in every ditch in Florida

You can be a good book writer and still get eaten and chewed.

Fake romance w/you and the alligator.

The novelist would save the headline.

Every pillhead

is someone's

and could have been yours

I am not a stripper

I am not a pillhead

I am an alligator-headed book writer digging a hole in the backyard

Fake romance w/me and the shovel

Look how well I can use tools

Don't you trust me to record this

30x30 2012 #4

Why the fuck are these all about food? I might have an idea; I've been cutting out cheese and trying not to eat so many sweets in addition to my usual gluten-free, vegetarian diet. It sounds austere but I'll give you two words -- pumpkin butter. Now, for the poem.

________________________

Patisserie

Yours don't addle me so

I seek out crueller

drugs. Crullers.

Trampy eclairs.

Whoever goes with me

to the pastry shop better like good drag,

white-topped and iced,

shrieking and gelled,

a slap of color in every

damn case.

Whoever goes, better she knows.

In my heart everyone headbutts

to look this way, fans out like blades.

And only one gets

to the counter. Marches up

to register mademoiselle. Puts the money down

and waits like a catwalk. Call me

when you want a hot scrutiny

and your pastry scored.

30x30 2012 #3

Pancake

Sadness Little troll

wants to be alone

What we by nature wants is parties but

it wants us to be brief

exhale retreat

reprieve

So we said "I love you, goodnight"
and we went straight to razor

Cause-effect

gleeful ketchuping

We don't train for un-irony

a quick and easy and true

statement without stab

the old fat breakfast

beyond the night of no return

gristle-edged pancake

chewing the fat

Eat it's good for you

We are alone

This is a melodrama

This feels like it at least to everyone

Kitchen chair

but sticks

a screech stuck in the hinges of the door

did I tell you alone

I meant actually

30x30 2012 #2

Easter

I was making candied violets and I candied

my hands. The fifty-six rabbits that bum

around all year in my apartment

got that freak feral look in their eye

and came over to sniff.

I am trapped

by my candy hands,

I said guys, I am not the enemy.
They said I know. We know

the delicious reawakening. We can finally taste again.

30x30 2012: a napowrimo experiment

Inspired by my more prolific colleagues, I'm doing National Poetry Writing Month again. I hope to achieve draft I can find useful! But some will, I'm sure, remain draft. O bring back the egg unbroken.

______________________

Gingerroot

A mouth draws

with water
Its image burns with a warn

This copious

horn,

unjust multitude of rhizome

Fist and fingers

like it's real

Flasking in the night

Planting
Belly up

Scale it to prevent growths

I have scales of it all over my hands

she has the blood of reptiles

No, it's food blood

but damn I'm good at self

service